Camouflaging The Chimaera
by Coca-Cola3012
Summary: SODA MAY OR MAY NOT DIE. Soda's, TwoBit's and Steve's experiences in Vietnam. Sort of crossover with Full Metal Jacket.
1. So Much For Prayers

**Camouflaging the Chimaera**

Disclaimer: I own nada.

Chapter One: So Much For Prayers

"Soda, there's a letter here with your name on it!" Ponyboy called from the front door. Darry had asked him to get the mail.

"Who's it from?" Soda hollered back, stirring his chocolate milk while Darry sipped his coffee.

Ponyboy entered the kitchen and said in a more normal voice, "Looks like it's from the government."

Darry's coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth. A tense, heavy silence fell. Soda had stopped stirring his milk, paralyzed. He took the letter numbly from Ponyboy and stared at it blankly.

The war was in full throttle. Soldiers were dropping like flies every day over there, and as soon as one died another was drafted.

Soda had been eighteen for a week now. Eighteen, and of official age to get drafted. Darry had never told his brothers, but ever since the war had started he had started praying, like he had done as a child; praying that he wouldn't get drafted so he could take care of his brothers. For a full week now, he had been praying for Soda, too.

_So much for prayers,_ he thought now. He put on a brave front. Soda looked terrified; Ponyboy appeared about to cry.

"Open it, Soda," Darry coaxed gently. "Maybe it's not what we think it is, maybe it's Social Services or something—"

He was interrupted by a loud ripping sound. At first he thought that Soda had torn the letter in half; then he realized that he had savagely ripped away the envelope in his haste to get to the letter.

Soda's eyes darted across the words. In a moment his expression changed, and it only took Darry that long to realize what the letter must say.

Ponyboy had realized what it must mean, too. "No!" he screamed, flinging himself at his brother and overturning the glass of chocolate milk. "Soda, I won't let you go! You can't go to Vietnam, people die in Vietnam, you can't go! You can't go!"

His cries grew so loud Darry feared someone would hear and think they were torturing the poor kid or something, and tried to calm him down.

"Shhh, honey, it's okay," he tried, but to no avail. Ponyboy continued to scream fitfully as though he were in a nightmare, only this time they couldn't wake him up.

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Whaddya think? Continue or delete?


	2. Uncle Sam's Misguided Children

Chapter Two: Uncle Sam's Misguided Children

It was the day before Soda was leaving home. All the Tulsa boys drafted would be leaving on a bus for a three-week boot camp in Atlanta to train before they shipped out.

Ponyboy was lying in bed, facing the clock. It was 11:59…okay, scratch that, it was midnight. So now it was the day that Soda was leaving home, in approximately four hours.

He was painfully aware of Soda snoring gently next to him, an arm flung across Ponyboy. How could he sleep, knowing that this might be the last time they would ever see each other?

The mere thought of it made Ponyboy sick. He rolled over and regarded his handsome brother in the pale moonlight. "Love you, Soda," Ponyboy murmured, even though he knew his brother couldn't hear him.

There was something about looking at his brother that he couldn't stand. The sight of him evoked thoughts that were too painful, too sad. He couldn't deal with it.

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Soda wasn't surprised at his two brothers' reactions the next day just before he boarded the bus. It was four a.m. The sun hadn't even risen; there was just the bleak, gray light of dawn.

"Take care of yourself, Soda," Darry was trying to act official, but his expression didn't fool Soda. It was the same one he had worn for their parents' funeral and when Ponyboy was in the hospital, like he was a lost boy far from home.

"Don't worry, Darry, I'll be okay," Soda said. _I hope,_ he thought.

Ponyboy didn't say much, but it wasn't for the usual reasons: daydreaming or keeping his mouth shut. He was bawling too hard to speak into Soda's shoulder, shameless as other recruits shot him sympathetic or condescending looks. The latter were from the few, the bitter, the drafted Socs.

Soda gently untangled himself from Ponyboy. "It'll be okay, little buddy," he soothed. "It'll be all right. It's just thirteen months, they'll fly by, you watch."

Ponyboy just nodded, still sniffling. Darry put his arm around Ponyboy's shoulders, a protective more than affectionate gesture, it seemed to Soda.

He waved goodbye from the bus and they waved back, until they were out of each other's sight.

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Soda sat down heavily next to Steve, who was already arguing with another recruit who was, not surprisingly, a Soc.

"I did not screw up your tire rotation, dammit!" he was yelling.

"Like it matters anymore," Two-Bit cut in, ending the argument. "We're all comrades now, mates."

Steve and Two-Bit, who had successfully dodged the draft for two years until now, were with Soda on the bus, although they weren't sure if they would be assigned to the same units. Soda hoped so; at least he would know some people.

"Me too," Steve agreed. He looked strange without any grease in his hair at all; Soda hadn't seen him without any for years. He probably slept with his hair dripping in the mess and just added more every morning. But Two-Bit had advised them against it.

"They just buzz your hair off anyway," he had told them. "Grease just aggravates them cause it makes it harder to chop your hair off." He, too, looked unusual with no grease in his rusty hair.

Their section of the bus fell silent, although the air was littered with swearing from other parts of the bus.

"Can't believe we're gettin' drafted," Steve muttered. "Damn, what I wouldn't give for a smoke."

Soda had to agree with him there. He had smoked his way through most of Ponyboy's packs of Kools the past few days himself, as he only did when he was bothered.

"At least we're together," Two-Bit reminded them. "The three of us, just three more of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children."

There was a pause as Steve and Soda worked this out. Steve was the first to catch on. "U.S.M.C.," he groaned. "For United States Marine Corps."

"Oh," Soda said, and grinned slightly, although he suddenly felt sick. "That's a good one, Two-Bit."

"Heard it from the fella back there," Two-Bit said, tilting his head towards the fellow in question.

Steve guffawed. "Randy Adderson? Super Soc turned hippie?"

Indeed, after Johnny and Dally's deaths, Randy had undergone a transformation from prep bound for Harvard to hippie bound for Vietnam. Soda had heard the rumor that his father had forced him to enlist now that he was no good for college. He wondered why Randy, now a pacifist hippie, had agreed.

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The bus stopped several more times on their way to Atlanta, mainly in big cities where small-town boys had gathered.

Over the course of the journey, the bus had segregated racially. On the last stop, the only seat left for a skinny, nervous looking black boy who didn't look a day over thirteen was next to Two-Bit.

"Dammit!" Two-Bit was sure he heard the boy say before he perched cautiously on his seat, shooting Two-Bit nervous glances as though he expected Two-Bit to lynch him.

"Hi, I'm Two-Bit," Two-Bit said casually, holding out a hand.

The boy cautiously shook it. "My name's Mohammed," he said carefully. "Mohammed Ali-Khan."

"You Muslim?" Two-Bit asked.

Mohammed's round brown eyes narrowed. "You gotta problem with that?" he snarled.

"Naw, man," Two-Bit grinned. "I'm just too ignorant to know about these kinds of things just by your name, so, you know, I just wanna confirm it before I say something stupid—which I'm liable to do anyway."

Mohammed laughed. "You're alright, Two-Bit. That your real name?"

"Nope," Two-Bit smiled. His eyes tilted ceiling-wards as he contemplated a suitable name. "My name's…Zachariah Jeremiah Isaac Upsilamba the Third."

"Upsilamba?" Soda hooted. "Upsi-daisy is more like it! His name's Keith Mathews, but we call him Two-Bit. I'm Sodapop, and that's my real name."

"Steve," grunted Steve. He was glaring out the window. Two-Bit sighed inwardly. Steve was racist and, in Two-Bit's opinion, a moron for it.

_It had to be a black guy that stole his car,_ Two-Bit thought, _and now he hates all black people._

Soda gave Steve a pointed nudge, which Steve chose to ignore. Mohammed gave Steve a long, hard look before turning away.

"Something's happened to him," Mohammed said quietly. "Something to make him hate all black people, am I right?"

Two-Bit stared. "How in the…? What're you, psychic?"

"No," Mohammed sighed sadly, slumping in his seat. "You get to recognize these things after a while."

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It was past dark when they finally got there.

"I most certainly none of you ladies brought anything valuable to yourselves," the sergeant barked at the assembled group of men in an accent that seemed to be from Louisiana—Southern mingled with Cajun. At least that's how it sounded to Soda.

"I most certainly hope you are not wearing your favorite outfits, ladies," the sergeant growled. "Because you will never see them again! You will receive a nice new uniform for training, a nice shiny one that is to be kept in mint condition for civilian presentations, in which you will assert that you love being a Marine and thus encourage more saps like yourself to enlist. After training is when you will receive that second new uniform, after which you will get your lovely new combat uniforms. I hope you like them, because once we land in Nam, it will be the only clothes you own."

Soda could hardly keep from laughing as he imagined how Darry, poster-boy of cleanliness, would react to this unsanitary bit of news. He imagined his older brother picking a fight with the sergeant. But that sergeant was scary. Even Darry might meet his match in this man.

He sobered up as he sergeant went on. "You bunch of pansies will meet me at o-four-hundred hours in this spot, in your training uniforms, in order. What?" he growled at a Soc-y looking boy.

"In what particular order?" he dared to ask.

"The order of _I don't give a damn!"_ the sergeant roared. "Get to the barracks!"

They got to.

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Soda couldn't sleep that night. He was kept awake by the sounds of the people around him—snoring, coughing, snickering amongst themselves, and the tiny sniffles of a young boy who had enlisted, too early it seemed.

_Ponyboy was never this loud, _Soda thought bitterly, putting his pillow over his head. _I wonder how he's doing anyway._


	3. Mighty Mouse

Chapter Three: Mighty Mouse

"Holy crap, this is at least ten dollars worth of mail!" Darry yelped.

Ponyboy cowered slightly at his older brother's loud voice. Lately he had been getting jumpy, edgy.

"I'm sorry, Darry," he mumbled a lame apology. "I, I, I'll take back some of the letters…Soda don't have to read everything I write…"

"No way, little buddy," Darry said, holding them out of Ponyboy's reach. "Soda's waiting to hear from us, mostly you. Don't be stingy about writing him."

Ponyboy stared at Darry agape. "Whaaaaat? You're the one who's whining it's ten dollars!"

Darry towered over his brother in mock threat. "You accusing me of whining, boy?"

"No more than I am accusing you of being as intelligent as you are handsome," Ponyboy said, and then ducked under Darry's arm for a quick escape before Darry could figure it out.

Unfortunately for Ponyboy, Darry was quicker on the uptake than Soda was when Ponyboy pulled that one. Darry pretended to punch him playfully before releasing him and commanding him to take out the trash before he went to school.

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"Mail call!" the sergeant barked. "Why any one would want to write to any of you sorry little pussies is beyond me, but here they are. Your girlfriends breaking up with you, wives running around on you, brothers disrespecting you and parents telling you how much you've let them down. Brent!" he roared, flinging a flimsy envelope at the boy.

Soda perked up when the sergeant barked, "Curtis!" and flung ten thick letters at him.

"Damn, somebody really likes you," a skinny boy with glasses that everyone called the Professor commented.

"My brother, Ponyboy," Soda grinned widely. "Man, I miss him. And Darry too. He's my other brother. The older one."

"Wrote us too," Two-Bit said, holding up a thick envelope. "He don't like us as much as he likes you, though."

Steve was reading his one letter from Evie, and his face was falling faster than a ruined soufflé.

"You okay, man?" Soda asked in a low voice.

"Evie broke up with me. Says she ain't no hippie, but she don't like the war either, so she's breaking it off. She don't want to be with no soldier." He crushed the pink paper in his fist. "That ain't fair. I didn't choose this. I didn't want to do this. Doesn't she think I'd rather be with her than in this hellhole?"

"It's okay, man," Soda said. "You can do better than her."

"Oh, yeah," Steve said sarcastically. "A desperate gook prostitute, that'll be my only girlfriend once we get in-country."

Soda sighed. "I dunno what to tell you, man."

"It's okay. I'll be fine," Steve said, though he didn't look it.

"You okay, man? Steve? Hey, Steve looks sick," a loudmouthed L.A. native, Hollywood they called him, said.

"He's okay," Two-Bit yelled back. "Ain't that right, Steve old buddy old pal old friend?"

Steve tried to grin. "Whether at sea or whether on land, I've got the situation well in hand," he said pseudo-cheerfully, quoting Mickey Mouse.

It took some of the guys a few seconds to figure out it was from Mickey Mouse, but once they got it they laughed.

Two-Bit laughed the loudest of all. "You shouldn't have said that, you shouldn't have said that!" he kept saying.

"What? How come?"

"You moron," Soda sniggered. "You just gave yourself your own Marine nickname."

Two-Bit had retained his own nickname, and Sodapop's real name was unusual enough that he didn't need a nickname. Most of the other guy had nicknames too, like the Professor and Hollywood. And now Steve.

After that comment of his, despite his many protests, everyone called him…Mighty Mouse.

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	4. The Marines' Hymn

Chapter Four: The Marines' Hymn

Disclaimer: Outsiders, Full Metal Jacket and Monstrous Regiment references don't belong to me. Oh yeah, neither does the Marines' hymn.

They had been at the training camp for two weeks, though it felt like forever. Steve felt like punching Two-Bit as he danced around the bunk beds after another twenty-hour day, singing the Marines' Hymn, which seemed to have replaced his song of choice, the Mickey Mouse theme. Steve couldn't decide which one was more annoying.

Soda chortled as Two-Bit waltzed past them. Steve didn't know how they could stay in high spirits, even here, even now. He hardly recognized them with their heads shaved bald.

_When I get back,_ he vowed to himself, _if I get back, I'd never cut my hair again. And I'll use a full tub of grease every day._

"…If the army and the navy ever look on heaven's scenes/They will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines!" Two-Bit belted the final words. He then took a deep breath and started again. "From the halls of—oof!" he grunted as Steve launched himself at Two-Bit, catching him in the stomach and knocking him over.

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"Hey, Steve, whatsamatter? Don't like my…whoa, Steve, what's wrong?" Two-Bit's grin faded as Steve hoisted himself up off of Two-Bit.

For Two-Bit had seen in his friend's eyes the look of an animal, repressed for what might have been years. They all knew Steve was bitter, had been for years—for being a greaser, for his father who couldn't stand him, for his mother who wasn't around, for Johnny and Dally, for the world he was convinced was out to get him. Maybe this was the last straw.

For the first time ever, Two-Bit began to be a little afraid of Steve. He had heard about men going crazy in war, coming in one way and going out the other. He was afraid of the animal in Steve, which, with training and official license to kill, might be unleashed. Steve was a lion of a fighter on his own. If the thing in him ever broke free…Two-Bit shuddered to think.

"Steve!" Soda ran after his best friend.

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"Steve! Oy!" Soda yelled, following his friend outside. "Wait up, man!"

Steve rounded on Soda. "I hate it here!" he hissed. "Let's break out now, tonight."

"Steve," Soda knew this went beyond Two-Bit's singing, "Be reasonable, man. This ain't like you—"

"Yeah, okay, sure," Steve snarled. "Whatever you say." But he followed Soda back to their tent docilely.

As they approached the tent, they could hear Two-Bit singing again and Mohammed's high, fine voice crooning in the background. "From the halls of Montezuma…"

They stopped short as Soda and Steve entered the tent. "What?" Steve said, more normally now. "Don't stop singing just cause I'm here."

But they didn't resume their singing. Two-Bit dared to hum a few lines as they crawled into bed at last, exhausted.

Four hours later, at four a.m., Soda awoke to the sound of a bugle. He sat up abruptly, banged his forehead and, clutching it in pain, rolled out of his bed, which was mercifully on the bottom bunk, and fell on the floor in a mess of blankets and pillow.

He groaned inwardly. He would never get used to waking up like that. He liked it when Darry woke him up gently—gently for Darry, that is.

"Gentlemen!" the sergeant barked two minutes later. "I am sorry to inform you that I am going into combat and will be leaving you pansies in the hands of another!"

_Yes!_ Soda cheered inwardly while many around him breathed subtle sighs of relief, including Randy Adderson next to him. Soda hadn't seen him there before just then. It was amazing, really—there was no difference between any of them anymore. Not greasers, not Socs. They were just all jarheads.

"This is your replacement!" the sergeant roared, and another man stepped up beside him.

_No!_ Soda thought while around him, the Marines who had sighed in relief recollected their breaths in gasps of terror.

The new guy looked even meaner than the first, with an expression like he could swallow them and knew it. His ears were set close to his head, shaved smoothly, and he looked like he might be of Chinese descent, but Soda could tell from his voice that he had been born in the States.

"I'm Sergeant Zhang," he said calmly once the first sergeant had left. The sound of his voice alone was soothing, and Soda actually began to think that he wasn't so nasty after all. How wrong he was.

Sergeant Zhang paced up and down the barracks, stopping once at Two-Bit. "You seem to have left a T out of your name, Marine," he said.

"Mathews is just how it's spelled, sir. The name's Keith Mathews, only people call me Two-Bit."

"Two-Bit," Zhang said carefully. "You trying to be smart with me?"

"Sir?" Two-Bit said jovially. It was all Soda could do to keep from smacking his forehead. Stupid Two-Bit—he never knew when to keep his mouth shut.

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"I said, are you trying to be smart?" Zhang's tone had lowered dangerously. He leaned in closer to Two-Bit until he was about four inches from Two-Bit's face. Two-Bit could smell whisky on the other man's breath.

Even Two-Bit knew when not to be mouthy. "No sir."

"You're not trying to be smart?" Zhang questioned.

"No sir."

Zhang leaned in another three inches. Two-Bit practically leapt out of his skin when Zhang bellowed, _"Why not?"_

Two-Bit was shocked. No authority back in Tulsa ever interrogated him in this strange manner. "Sir?" he said, startled.

"If you're not trying to be smart that means you're happy to be stupid, and I've had it up to here," Zhang held a hand to his forehead, "with stupidity. Get with it, Marine! There is no room for stupidity in Vietnam!"

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He then rounded on Sodapop. "You are the one with the unusual first name?"

Sodapop nodded. "Sir, yes, sir," he affirmed. "The name's Sodapop Curtis, sir."

He waited for the worst, but Zhang only chuckled. "We are two of a kind," he said. He pointed at his nametag. "My parents also bestowed me, upon my birth in Philadelphia, an unusual name."

"Your last name? Sir?" Sodapop added quickly.

"In China, the last name comes before the first, and that is how my parents marked it on my birth certificate. Thus my first name became my last."

"Oh…" Sodapop said, but Zhang had already moved on to his next victim.

Randy Adderson.

Zhang's eyes narrowed. "I smell cannabis on you, Marine," he said in a lethal tone.

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Oh no! What's yet to come? Read and Review and you will see…


	5. Camouflaging the Chimera

Chapter Five: Camouflaging the Chimera

"Cannabis?" Randy mumbled. "Dunno why'd you think, why you'd think, what you'd said, what you're saying…"

Zhang stepped around Randy and kicked open the lid of the standard issue trunk at his bed. Soda had a perfect view from where he was standing of its contents as Zhang pawed through them: uniforms, shoes, socks, and a plastic baggie of…

"Marijuana," Zhang said. "Why is this in your possession, Marine?"

"Cause," Randy said, and his words were suddenly coming out at rocket speed. "Cause I was like, no freaking way I'm getting into the Marines, and then it happened, and I couldn't believe it because there is no freaking way I was going into the Marines, right, and then here am I, I am, in the Marines, and tattoos and singing and guns and rifles and engines and I couldn't handle it and I had it my old man would've found it found it and hurt angry mad sad called the fuzz called the Marines and told them to take me now, now, now, this kid's nothing but trouble he needs discipline—"

Sergeant Zhang silenced him with a blow across the face. Randy reeled backwards and fell. "Mathews!" he barked, his face contorted with rage.

Two-Bit stepped forward. Soda couldn't help but marvel at his calmness. "Sir yes sir?"

"Take this piece of shit to the medical ward immediately. They will take care of him properly."

When they had left, Zhang rounded on the rest of them. "If any of you had managed to smuggle in any other illegal substances," he said sarcastically, "or any other prohibited items, namely items that were not issued to you at the beginning of your training, reveal yourselves now and spare yourselves of my wrath."

A brief general shuffle through belongings brought forth an array of items: photographs, letters, hand knit sweaters, and, strangely enough, jelly doughnuts.

"Photographs and letters are all right. The same goes for sweaters and socks that your mothers have kindly spent their time on for you. Just be sure that when you wear them, they don't get in the way of your uniform. Jennings," he said sharply, "dispose of those magazines immediately."

"Larson," he said when Jennings had scuttled off, "get rid of those damned doughnuts. Immediately. And I don't mean eat them," he added, eyeing Larson's generous stomach.

"Awful lot of photographs there. Sure you're going to be able to haul them all?" Zhang asked of Mohammed.

"I can handle it," Mohammed said, looking up for the first time. His eyes had been on his feet the entire time, but now he dared to look his commander in the eye.

"Family?" Zhang said understandingly. Mohammed nodded. Zhang said, "Just make sure they don't weigh you down."

When Two-Bit returned, his items were also given a thorough looking-through. "Damn," he said in a low voice when Zhang had left them with orders to get a good night's sleep, they would need it. "He ain't doing nothing halfway, is he?"

"No," Soda sighed. "Wonder how Pony's doing."

"How can you wonder? Damn kid writes you every damn day, dammit," Steve said petulantly.

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They were awoken the next morning at three a.m. The sun wasn't even up, and they shivered in their t-shirts as Zhang shouted at them.

It was an obstacle course. Climbing ropes, jumping bars, and running through tires. Two-Bit nearly laughed at the Socs struggling through it. For him, it was easy. Climbing ropes was no different than scaling drainpipes, jumping bars was no different than jumping fences, and running was running. It had always been running, it would always be running.

"Mathews," Zhang said once Two-Bit joined the first ones to finish, Soda and Steve. "Mathews, go back and help Adderson."

Two-Bit did just that. "Hey, Randy," he said. "Need help?"

"I need…" Randy's eyes squeezed closed as he gritted his teeth. "Need…need grass, man," he groaned.

"No you don't," Two-Bit said. "What you need is to swing your leg over here," he thumped the wooden bar. "Go on. It's just climbing. You ain't gonna fall. Just like…" he tried to think of a Soc-y synonym. "Like, I dunno, skiing and climbing up the mountain or something."

Randy awkwardly swung his leg over the top of the wooden structure.

"That's right," Two-Bit said. "Now the other one."

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From the distance, Zhang watched them. He had been in this war too long. He recognized types like Randy almost instantly. Randy wasn't cut out for war. It went beyond the drugs and hippie ideals. This boy was a pacifist through and through. If forced, he might open something in himself that all men, even the most peaceful of them, had. And it would ruin him.

This war, as Zhang had reflected many times, could never do what it was meant to do, instill a democracy and change a country. The purpose of this war was a chimera, an impossible ideal that could never be attained.

_So what are we doing by going in and trying to do the impossible? _Zhang wondered. He smirked to himself. _Covering up the fact, with the United States' loud blaring fanfare that they call warfare, that the task is impossible, a chimera. We, as soldiers, are merely camouflaging the chimera._

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Well, there you have it. That explains the title.


	6. In Country

Chapter Six: In-Country

_This is it,_ Soda thought as the plane took a sharp turn downward and accelerated towards the ground. _We're finally landing in Khe Sanh._

Next to him, a soldier threw up. Soda swore loudly and leaned against Steve, who was silent and still as a stone statue on hi other side.

"S-sorry," the soldier who had thrown up apologized. "Couldn't help it…" his voice trailed off and he stared at the ground, too embarrassed to look Soda in the eye.

Soda immediately felt something like compassion for the kid. _Glory,_ he thought, _the kid can't be older than Ponyboy. What the hell's he doing enlisting?_

"Jesus," Two-Bit muttered. "Would ya look at that."

Soda couldn't see what he was looking at.

"Just some rice fields," Steve said gruffly. "And our landing base."

"Them rice fields sure are pretty," Mohammed said, craning his neck to see around Two-Bit. "Wish I was here on vacation, 'stead of in combat."

Soda was only half-listening to Mohammed. He was staring at Randy, who was shivering and yet sweating, pale and looking like he was about to throw up, too.

"You okay?" he asked Randy with genuine concern.

Randy gave Soda a haunted look. These past few days, he, too, had earned himself a barrage of nicknames ranging from Druggie, Drug Addict, and The Addict to The True Flower Child and Hippie-Yippie.

"Need grass, man," he moaned. "Need it so bad…" he whimpered.

"He's going through withdrawal symptoms," Steve muttered.

"Ain't we all," Two-Bit cracked a cynical joke. "Women, smoking, fighting, being free men. We're all suffering withdrawal symptoms, boys."

Steve actually grinned. "When did you get so deep?"

Two-Bit smirked. "It just comes natural."

"Natural as my dreads," a tall, lanky boy of Jamaican descent named Jamal cut in to laughter from all around.

"We're landing," the soldier at Soda's side squeaked, and threw up again.

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As they disembarked and got into their straight, orderly lines, the soldiers returning back home hooted and catcalled to them as they embarked. Two-Bit didn't think he had ever seen such a filthy bunch.

Their uniforms were literally rotting right off them, their hair looked like it hadn't been cut or shaved since they arrived a year ago, and their skin was all caked with thick red clay.

"Welcome, fresh meat!"

"Have fun, suckers!"

"Enjoy yourselves!"

_Oh, I will,_ Two-Bit thought sarcastically.

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Steve was on fire watch that night. He was so damned tired it wasn't funny, but he stayed awake anyway. The last thing he wanted was Zhang's wrath wreaked upon him.

He waved his flashlight around vaguely, barely stifling a yawn. As he finished yawning, his light happened upon Randy, sitting in the bathroom against the wall, a rifle in his hand.

"Randy?" Steve said quietly. If they got caught, they were both screwed. "Whatcha doing? Get back to sleep."

Randy paused, and for a moment Steve thought he would refuse and they would have to start a fight, but mercifully Randy docilely said, "Okay," got up, handed Steve the rifle and shuffled off to bed.

Steve shook his head as he hung the rifle back up and thought to himself, _Goofy kid. Man am I tired._

It would only be later, much later, that Steve would look back and wish he had seen the signs while they were there.

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Can somebody help me out with the kind of stuff they would have done? I realize I should do this research myself but seriously…school is bad enough.


	7. First Armed Combat

Chapter Seven: First Armed Combat

Soda's head was pounding from the constant gunfire. And there was still more to come.

Steve was swearing beside him, huddled with his rifle propped up against his knees. "Heard Raquel Welch came to visit some troops or whatever," he said casually during a lull in the attack.

_How can he think of Raquel Welch at a time like this?_ Soda thought, although admittedly it was a temporary distraction from the situation at hand.

Soda wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. It was two o'clock in the morning, and they were firing at Vietnamese boys they couldn't see who were flinging what appeared to be some kind of potent homemade bombs at them. Their smell made Soda's eyes water. He blinked furiously as one of them exploded, and when he could see again there were three dead guys in front of him.

"Holy—" he started to say.

Another one went off.

"—shit," he finished.

It felt like hours before it was over. Zhang reported that the only ones dead were the three Soda had seen. There had been up to fifteen of the Vietnamese fighters. They were all dead.

"Got four," Jamal announced. Zhang silenced him with a look.

"It's not about," he started to say, but stopped. Instead, he turned and walked rapidly away, leaving the soldiers to fall asleep fitfully.

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_It's not about how many you kill, _Zhang had been about to say, but of course it was. Of course it was.

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"Hey, Randy. You okay, man?" Two-Bit heard Mohammed whisper to the hippie.

"'M alright," Randy snuffled into his pillow. "Just don't…don't like killing…"

"It'll be all right," Two-Bit drawled reassuringly. He rolled over and fell asleep, tired as a bear before hibernation. He thought he must have been dreaming, but he could have sworn he heard Randy say, "It won't be all right, it won't be…"

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Just…a chapter.


	8. Bad Aim

Chapter Eight: Bad Aim

Soda pulled off his boot with a sucking noise. The other soldiers were squelching around the tent.

There had been nothing but rain for the past week. Just today, they had been marching when a mudslide had flung them down a hill.

_Flashback: "Look alive, Sodapop!" Two-Bit yelled. Soda looked around just in time for Two-Bit's mud pie to hit him in the face. _

"_Oh, Steve!" Two-Bit had hollered next, winding up his arm to fling another handful of mud, but had stopped short at the sight of Steve's face. _

_Soda had seen it too—that animal look of rage again. He exchanged a glance with Two-Bit. Neither of them even knew what had provoked it this time—after all, it was just some mud—but there it was. It scared them. It certainly scared Soda. _

"_Back on your feet," barked Zhang. Surprisingly, Randy Adderson was the first one back in position. Even Zhang's face betrayed surprise before his features hardened again and they kept going. _

_End Flashback. _

"Ugh," Two-Bit said, sounding repulsed. Soda looked over at him. Two-Bit was holding up what looked like the remains of his socks.

"If you wash them, I'll darn them for you," Mohammed offered.

Steve hooted. "When did you learn how to sew?" He had warmed up to Mohammed considerably since they had gotten here, but the black boy was still wary of the greaser.

"Just picked it up, I guess," he mumbled. "Had to learn to do my own stuff in college."

"When were you in college?" Two-Bit asked interestedly.

"Just last year, before my father died and I had to work to support the family. But then I got drafted," Mohammed said bitterly. "I was at Harvard," he added.

Two-Bit whistled. "We've got a genius among us. The Professor better watch out."

"The Professor died of his wounds today," Steve said quietly. They all stopped and looked at him. "I was on duty in the infirmary and he died of infection. No wonder, too," he added, his voice growing hard and the look of rage coming back onto his face. "With that damned piece of shit tent in the jungle, they think it's an infirmary when it's nothing better than an infection house—"

Soda dropped his boots in his haste to get to Steve. "Easy, buddy," he said soothingly, placing a hand on Steve's shoulder.

Steve clenched his fists. "It's not right," he said thickly. "That boy was on his way to college, he would have been something—" He stopped short and ran a hand through the tufts of dark hair that were growing in.

"Hey," Soda said. "I know it's not right. But, I don't know, sometimes you just can't explain things."

"I know," Steve muttered. "Boy, do I know." Soda wondered in that instant if Steve, like him, was thinking of Dallas and Johnny.

"This war is full of unfair deaths," said a voice from above them, causing them all to jump.

Soda looked up. It was Zhang. His face was like stone. "You should all get some rest," he said before turning on his heel and stalking away.

There was a painful silence which Two-Bit broke. "Well, at least he fulfills Asian stereotypes. That man's like a ninja."

Soda shook his head, laughing. Two-Bit, at least, would never change.

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Zhang was worried. He may not have looked it, but he was old enough to have fought in World War Two. He remembered having been stationed in the Philippines, a young soldier fresh out of training, just like the boys he was commanding now…

It had been different back then. They had had the conviction that they were fighting for what was right and the entire country had supported them. This time around, there were no patriots, just frightened boys forced to kill civilians seemingly without reason, and all they had to look forward when they returned was a country that didn't support them or love them for what they were giving up for her.

Zhang remembered his comrades. One in particular—James Otahal—who had almost killed him one night. It had been dark and Zhang had come running up—frightened to death that the Japanese had arrived, James had almost shot Zhang.

_Yes_, Zhang thought. _So easy to confuse your comrades with the enemy when you're told the enemy looks a certain way. Japs back then, gooks now…it's all the same_.

He just hoped that whichever one of them shot at him this time would have just as bad aim as James Otahal did.

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Okay, that was basically just a transition back into writing. I'm back after so long—sorry about the wait.


	9. Burning Villages

Chapter Nine: Burning Villages

Two-Bit's ears were ringing. He had never been so scared before in his entire life, even during the worst rumbles. The Socs had never had guns or homemade bombs. Back then, it was never a matter of life or death.

He could see Soda yelling at him but couldn't hear him above the gunfire.

"Eh?" he shouted back, cupping a hand to his ear, but he never heard what Soda was saying, for at that moment Mohammed tackled him to the ground as three Molotov cocktails whistled through the air, landing at their feet. Shrapnel caught Two-Bit over his left eyebrow. He blinked as blood ran into his eyes, struggling to his feet.

He hoisted Mohammed up. "Thanks," he said, his voice shaking despite his best efforts to appear calm.

"Yeah," Mohammed said, flashing him a tremulous grin. He had doodled a peace sign onto the side of his combat helmet. Two-Bit found the gesture amusingly ironic.

"Get down, men!" Zhang roared. They dropped to the ground immediately, glancing at Zhang for further instructions.

"This way!" Zhang commanded, gesturing. They followed, all of them crawling on their elbows. Zhang led them into a trench and signaled them to stay there.

"What're we doing?" Steve whispered to Two-Bit.

Two-Bit opened his mouth to say, "I don't know," but what came out instead was an answer Two-Bit hadn't been aware he knew: "Waiting."

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Zhang waited until the explosions stopped to step cautiously out of the trench. He couldn't see anybody, but he knew there were Viet Cong somewhere in the shadows.

Occasionally he felt sorry for them. After all, they were just boys and the United States was invading their country. In their position, Zhang might just do the same. The feeling of pity usually lasted right up until they started throwing grenades again.

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Soda closed his eyes. He could no longer see the fire before him, but he could still feel the heat, hear the screams.

He opened his eyes again and, swallowing hard, lit another match and threw it at an untouched hut.

He couldn't understand why they were doing this. Oh, Zhang said it was to weed out Viet Cong that could be there, but Soda didn't understand how mothers and their children could be Viet Cong. Mothers and children, those were the only people left in the villages. And the elderly. No men. No one that could possibly be Viet Cong, and still they burned the villages.

_I thought we weren't supposed to hurt civilians!_ Soda felt like screaming, but he didn't dare question Zhang. Not because Zhang scared him that much. It just wasn't done.

_Three months ago, you would never have just taken orders to do this,_ the traitorous thought popped into Soda's mind. _But back then I wasn't a soldier,_ Soda thought in reply. _I am one now._

Soda closed his eyes once again as the screaming escalated. He opened them in time to see women carrying some children, dragging the rest along with them, disappearing into the forest. He saw one adolescent boy helping his grandmother along until he was shot. Soda started as the boy crumpled, a rose of blood blooming on his lower back.

He glanced around to see who had shot the boy and saw Two-Bit lowering his rifle. He loped over to Two-Bit, whose gray eyes were stormy and whose hands were shaking.

"Why'd you do it?" Soda asked. "He wasn't doin' nothing."

"Orders," Two-Bit said quietly, lowering his head. "Kill all males of age to be…" his voice trailed off, but Soda knew what he meant. All males of age to be a threat.

"File out, men!" Zhang roared when he was satisfied the entire village was ablaze. "Where's Adderson?" he added when they were on the move again.

Soda and Steve exchanged a glance. They hadn't seen Randy at all. In wordless agreement, they ran back together to look for him.

They tied their handkerchiefs around their noses and mouths to keep from inhaling smoke and, keeping their rifles at the ready in case of trouble, headed back into the blazing village.

Steve kicked in a door. The entire hut collapsed. He shook his head. Soda looked into huts, watching for a moving shape, looking for anything at all.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Soda whirled around, ready to shoot, but it was only Two-Bit.

"Zhang says look around the outer huts where we first came in!" Two-Bit yelled over the crackling flames.

Soda sprinted towards them, fearing the worst. Those were the ones that had been burning the longest. If Randy was in one of them, there was a good chance he was dead by now.

"Randy!" Soda screamed.

"Soda!" Steve yelled, gesturing him over. "There's someone in there!"

Soda stared at the burning structure. He couldn't see a way in without catching fire himself. "Randy," he yelled desperately. "Come out!"

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Randy was curled up, his knees to his chest, listening to the sound of his own breathing.

"…_Randy!"_

He could hear someone calling for him, probably in his dreams.

"_Randy!"_

No, there it was again. He opened his eyes and started. When had everything started burning? He remembered Zhang telling them to set things on fire, but he hadn't thought it would happen so soon…

"_Randy, come out!"_

Come out? Come out…

Randy shifted forward. He couldn't stand up; the rafters were on fire. He crawled on his hands and knees towards the voice. He knew that voice. He knew he could trust it.

"_Randy, you're almost there!"_

Randy's heart started beating faster and he moved more quickly. He recognized that voice now. It was Soda, and they were surely here to rescue him.

At that moment, the rafters above him groaned, finally collapsing as the wood disintegrated in the flames, the ash spilling onto him. The last beam broke and the roof fell in on him, killing him instantly.

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Two-Bit turned his head away as they passed by a ditch. They were on the move again. Flies were swarming the ditch, and by now Two-Bit knew that was a sure sign there was a dead body in the ditch. He didn't feel like looking at it. He had had enough of that. It was bad enough that Soda couldn't stop sniffling.

At least he wasn't as bad as he had been a few hours ago. He hadn't been able to stop bawling, in shock at the sight of Randy dying like that.

Zhang hadn't reprimanded Soda for crying. He did, however, take him aside to talk when they stopped for a meal.

Steve spat out what he had been chewing and added a few expletives. "F—ing hotdogs!" he shouted. "Dammit!"

"Four fingers of death," Jamal said grimly, holding up the four-pack of hotdogs. "Better than dirt."

"Tried dirt before?" Soda said, rejoining them. He looked much better than earlier. He seemed to have calmed down.

"No, but I can imagine," Jamal said, grinning.

Two-Bit scrutinized Soda intensely. Soda must have known, because he wasn't making eye contact with him. He appeared better, but Two-Bit knew he wasn't all right.

_Not yet, anyway,_ he thought firmly. _He'll be fine in time._

Or so he hoped, as he heard Soda's muffled crying late into the night.

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Okay, so there it is. Review, please?


	10. Adrenaline

Chapter Ten: Adrenaline

_Dear Darry and Ponyboy, _

_Today we walked through an untouched field of red poppies. It was real pretty. I wish you could have seen it. It was one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. It's nice to know that not everything in this country is wrecked. _

_I can't wait to come home. I wish I could tell you more about where we are, but it's classified information and then this letter wouldn't get sent to you. _

_Randy's dead. I probably can't tell you how he died, so I won't risk it. I love you both and I want you to know that. _

_Love, Soda _

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"Pssst, Soda," a voice whispered in Soda's ear.

"Pony?" Soda said sleepily, thinking for one blissful moment that he was back home and Ponyboy was waking him up.

"It's me, Hollywood," his comrade said. "We gotta move out."

Soda groaned. He had only just gotten to sleep. He wasn't the only one complaining; there were grumbles from many soldiers, at least until Zhang stepped into the tent.

"All of you shut up," he said. "I know we're all tired, but they will never stop. We just have to push through it."

Soda sighed. Hollywood nudged him, grinning. "Hear that?" he said. "Zhang just told us to shut up. Lack of sleep's making him cranky."

Soda grinned, but without much conviction. There was a dull ache in his chest, like his heart was weighed down with rocks.

Steve noticed and clapped Soda on the back. "Let's keep it moving, buddy. We'll pull through, sure enough."

"Yeah," Soda heard himself saying. "Sure enough."

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_Dear Darry and Ponyboy, _

_Nothing's changed since I last wrote home. I just miss you guys so much. Writing makes me feel like I'm talking to you guys, even though I won't send you this letter. _

_Love, Soda _

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Steve released a yell of triumph as he fired at the Viet Cong and they went down one by one. He had never felt adrenaline like this before. It wasn't that he liked killing people, especially these boys who were barely their age. It was just easier to think of them as the enemy and nothing else. It was easier that way.

He wiped the sweat off his brow and snarled at the oncoming guerrilla fighters. _Bring it on,_ he thought.

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Two-Bit rolled over in his cot, trying to sleep. There was more than one comrade crying himself to sleep tonight. It could have been because three more of them had died that day. He tried not to think about it.

Miles Fitzpatrick had stepped on a land mine. It had killed him instantly and injured the nearest soldier, James Levitt. James had been flown out to a military hospital as soon as a helicopter could come for him. Two-Bit only hoped that it was soon enough.

The other two had been killed in a surprise attack by a sniper. The rest of them ran for cover. They never found the sniper. Two-Bit had thought the shooting would never stop.

He shut his eyes. It would all be over soon.

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	11. Ponyboy and Darry

Ponyboy wondered how Soda would look when he came back. Soldiers were beginning to come back to Tulsa now, many discharged because they had lost an arm, or a leg, or both.

Ponyboy was just glad Darry hadn't been drafted. Wouldn't be drafted, as long as Ponyboy was a minor.

_What if the war lasts that long, though? _Ponyboy found himself thinking. He imagined Darry, head shaved, fifty pounds of bullets, rifle and rations on his back. And maybe Ponyboy himself.

Ponyboy found that he was more worried about Darry getting drafted than he was about himself. Maybe because it just seemed so unfair—to work half your life to take care of your brothers, and then lose it for nothing.

Darry was working late that night. Ponyboy made chili and did his homework until he heard Darry burst through the screen door.

"You didn't bother to check the mail, did ya, you dope?" was Darry's greeting.

Ponyboy turned in his chair to face Darry. His older brother was grinning hugely.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ponyboy demanded.

"You didn't get the mail when it came today. And that means that I am now the proud owner of one letter from Mr. Sodapop Curtis."

Ponyboy knocked over the chair in his effort to scramble over the back of it. He landed chin-first on the kitchen floor, but this didn't deter him from jumping up and dancing around Darry, who was holding the letter high out of Ponyboy's reach.

"Wait your turn," Darry said, smirking.

"Aw, come on!" Ponyboy said. "We have to read it together."

"All right, all right, keep your shirt on."

They flopped on the couch together, making the springs shriek. Darry opened the envelope expertly with his thumb, and retrieved the letter. Both the envelope and the letter were wrinkled, as if they had been wet. Mercifully, though, the handwriting was clear.

_Dear Darry and Ponyboy, _

_Sorry about the wrinkled paper. All my stuff got soaked through when we waded through a river the other night. _

_Things aren't so good here. We haven't run into any Viet Cong lately, but glory, is it scary. _

_Two-Bit says hello. Well, actually he says send all my love to Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. He'll never change no matter what. _

_I miss you both. Stay safe. I hope the war ends soon so I can come home to you both again. _

_Love, _

_Sodapop _

Darry cleared his throat. He stood up suddenly, and Ponyboy knew he was trying to hold back tears. Ponyboy was, too.

"Finish your homework," Darry said gruffly, and then walked out of the room.

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Ponyboy heard about more and more people getting drafted. It was mostly the Socs at school. Curly Shepard got drafted too, and ate nothing but beets for twelve days before his examination so it would look like he had blood in his urine. He failed the medical exam, but ironically it wasn't because it looked like he was peeing blood, but because he had too much iron in his system. From eating nothing but beets.

When Ponyboy heard of Curly getting drafted, he began to worry. Curly was barely eighteen. And more and more boys were getting their draft cards every day. The government was building up more and more troops, either because this war was turning out to be much bigger than anyone had imagined, or because the government was going to make the war much bigger than anyone had imagined.

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It's been a while. I just wrote this chapter to get my feet wet again. More soon.


	12. Just Another Day

Chapter 12: Just Another Day

It was daybreak when a grenade, homemade by the stench, landed approximately fifty yards to Commander Zhang's left, the sudden blaze blinding Zhang and his soldiers and knocking them off their feet.

"Get down!" Zhang shouted. He and the unit of exhausted, scared boys scuttled for cover in the nearest ditch. He commanded return fire when the next grenade exploded, showering them with dirt. The sharp, popping noises each rifle cartridge made almost seemed to be in harmony with the throbbing noise of each detonating grenade. They couldn't see the guerrilla, but they usually couldn't. The trees flung deep shadows and they were in unfamiliar territory.

Eventually they stopped shooting. The silence that followed rang like a bell. When Zhang was satisfied there was no one waiting in the shadows to kill them, he signaled to his unit and they continued, keeping their heads low and their rifles at the ready just in case.

They stepped off the broken path, approaching the dense forest where the grenades had come from. Zhang sliced through the rank foliage of the Northern Vietnamese jungle with a machete, clearing a path. He saw lanky Jamal cross himself surreptitiously.

Their orders were clear. Every Viet Cong was to be killed, every village harboring them burned.

Whoever had nearly blown them apart had to live somewhere nearby; Zhang had recently received news from military intelligence over his radio transistor that the homemade grenades the Viet Cong guerrillas often used were volatile and would explode on their own if not used a day or two after they were made.

Hours later, they found the village when Zhang's machete slid easily through yet another set of tree branches, soft from parasites and waterlogged from the endless monsoon, and revealed a worn road.

The dirt was pressed down firmly, indicating it was walked over frequently and recently. They followed it westward and, not a hundred yards later, came upon one of the many secluded villages tucked away in the jungles.

"Are we going to burn this one, too, Commander?" Curtis asked, trying to remain nonchalant.

Their orders were clear. "Yes," he said. He swallowed hard before he added, "Get to it."

The boys scattered. Mathews hoisted the flamethrower he had been transporting off his back, waiting until the rest of the soldiers had cleared away before spraying the edges of the village with the lethal, flammable gas. Zhang watched the houses and nearby forest ignite. He became aware of screaming, the sound melding with the crackling fire and the ever-present rifle firing.

Zhang was surprised the good-natured boy had turned out to be such an efficient killer. The military wanted killers. That was exactly what Zhang and his unit had been trained to be. Some turned war-hungry. Others went home traumatized and would never be the same. Most, like Zhang, took it stoically. Zhang hoped that Mathews was the latter, that he would see it as something that just had to be done and would lock that part of him away forever once he returned home. If he returned home.

Martin was still spraying the village, flames erupting before him. He nodded in acknowledgement to Zhang and Randy as they walked past.

"Somebody's in there!" a shout came from ahead. It was Randle. He turned a harried face to Zhang as they approached him. "Commander," he said worriedly, "that house is burning and I think someone's in there."

"Our men?" Zhang asked.

"No," Randle replied. "Vietnamese."

"Leave them," Zhang said shortly.

"But they're just civilian—" Randle began, but Zhang cut him off.

"It's not worth the risk to your life." He turned and strode past Randle and the burning house, his face like stone.

"What did the Commander say?" one of the soldiers, the one they called Hollywood, yelled from a distance.

Randle answered heavily. "He said leave them."

While every house in the small village was made of tin, they were insulated with dry thatch and the fire had spread to most of them by now. Zhang spotted Larson and Curtis crouched behind a shack, rifles at the ready. Curtis caught Zhang's eye and motioned frantically to stay back.

Zhang slipped into the nearest house, watching Larson and Curtis from the doorway. Larson crumpled, his head slumping onto Michaels' shoulder and a bloodstain appearing on his jacket as abruptly as if someone had spilled wine on it.

"There's a sniper," Zhang murmured to himself. He hadn't seen where the shot had come from, but Curtis evidently had. The soldier leapt up and sprinted, firing wildly at something Zhang couldn't see. When he stopped, Zhang emerged from the house and hauled Larson up.

"Can you walk?" Zhang asked. Larson nodded. "Good. Get Jamal to take you to the campsite and fix you up. Tell him to call for a medic. Got it?"

Larson nodded and staggered off. Zhang approached Curtis, who was surveying the dead Viet Cong guerrilla in front of him. "He's just a kid," he said. "Look at him. Kid's probably not older than fourteen."

There were tears in the soldier's eyes. Zhang remembered that Curtis had a brother around the same age. Hard to forget, the kid wrote more often than most men's girlfriends and wives.

Zhang gazed at the corpse. The guerrilla was wearing black rubber sandals. The little details always stood out. Zhang pressed his lips together in a thin line. "Keep moving, Curtis," he said quietly. "Nothing you can do for him now."

Curtis nodded. Zhang and Randy left him changing the cartridge on his rifle.

"Commander!" Randle yelled from behind them. Zhang turned in time to see the soldier loping towards them. "Commander, you should see this."

As it turned out, Randle and a few other soldiers had run across some civilians. Many of them were bleeding and several looked badly burned. One man was on his knees, weeping openly and staring at his hands, which were bleeding profusely. Several patches of skin on his palms and fingers were blackened and ashy from third-degree burns.

"Commander, what do we do with them?" Mohammed Ali Khan asked. He and the other soldiers couldn't seem to tear their eyes away from the villagers, who were regarding the soldiers fearfully.

Zhang was acutely aware of the entire unit looking at him. "Leave them. We have to move on."

"They're just civilians. We've got bandages, it's the least we can—"

"We have orders, Khan. We've got to move on."

"But—"

"Are you defying me, soldier?" Zhang said sharply.

"But they're hurt, Commander."

"I'm sorry, Khan," Zhang said after a long pause. "But it's not our place to do anything for them. What we do now is move on. Try and forget about them."

He strode forward, leading the soldiers out of the demolished village. They were silent as they marched out of the village and continued on through the jungle until sundown. More than once, Zhang thought he heard quiet sobbing behind him, but he didn't turn around. It was just another day for them, and he couldn't let them forget it.

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	13. Routines

Chapter 13: Routines

The days were repetitive, but somehow each day brought a new lesson or sight that would give Two-Bit fitful dreams for the rest of his life.

Every day was the same. They rose at dawn, packed up the campsite, walked all day, worried about grenades and guerillas, fired a few rounds at anything suspicious, set up sleeping bags and tents for the night and tried to sleep while worrying about ambushes or guerillas slitting their throats in the dead of night.

They were supposed to be a team, a unit. A whole. When you were part of a whole, Two-Bit reflected, there was no room for fear. For fear, you needed an individual. _What about me, _fear implored, _don't let anything happen to ME. _

He rolled over and tried to ignore the sounds of Soda sniffling in the darkness. Every kid they had to take out, which was a lot given that Viet Cong were the same age or younger than the American troops, reminded Soda of Ponyboy, every single one of them got to Soda, Two-Bit knew.

He couldn't really understand why at first, since they were the enemy they were supposed to be taking on and saving from themselves, or something. But then he understood. Those boys were the enemy, yes. But so were they.

All of them, Two-Bit, Steve, Soda, Hollywood, the Professor, Zhang, Mohammed, Jamal and everyone else. The good guys from their point of view, the enemy from the other side's. And the same for the other side, too. So when Soda watched an enemy die, he watched himself do to an eighteen-year-old what some other Vietnamese could be doing to Ponyboy or Darry in two years' time.

Leave that kind of sappy, convoluted thinking to Sodapop Curtis.

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Steve couldn't sleep. He wanted to go home. He had thought war would be different from this. Killing the enemy, he didn't have a problem with. He could deal with that, and for a while, he had even found himself enjoying it, which had scared him so much he could barely sleep for two days after.

It was killing the others that he couldn't do.

Sometimes, like with the last village they had raided, they didn't kill them outright. In some cases, all they did was leave them behind, bloodied and in need of care they couldn't get in the forests. Sometimes apathy was worse than violent rage.

Steve closed his eyes. What he wouldn't give to be back in Tulsa now. What he wouldn't give to be with Evie, even though she had betrayed him.

Thinking of her just made a surge of rage course through Steve's veins, further ruining his chances of sleeping tonight.

_Think of something else, _he told himself fervently. Strangely, he found himself thinking of Ponyboy.

The kid was a nuisance, but he was one of the few people who seemed to walk out of everything unscathed. Johnny and Dally's deaths, his parents' deaths, and now his brother Soda being shipped off to Vietnam. Somehow, Ponyboy always stayed the same, naïve, unassuming, space case kid he had always been.

Steve felt as though he had barely drifted off when Zhang was in the tent, shouting at them to move their lazy asses and get moving.

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In Tulsa, Curly was redrafted on the grounds that his first medical examination had turned out suspicious results. He didn't bother with the beets this time.

"It was only going to be a matter of time," he told Ponyboy. "Besides, I hate beets."

Army and Marine recruiters began showing up at Ponyboy's school.

"Enlist and I kill you," Darry warned.

"I know, I know, don't worry," Ponyboy replied exasperatedly. There was no way he was going to enlist. If he did, he wouldn't be around when Soda came back.

Ponyboy's days fell into a routine of sorts as well, if you could call spending every waking moment with his heart in his throat routine. Wake up, school, track, homework, check for a letter from Soda, write Soda a letter, sleep.

He wrote Soda every day and made Darry send every letter. Some of them were so short Darry made Ponyboy start writing multiple letters on the same page and stuffing them in the same envelope to save on postage.

Ponyboy didn't mind. Even if he had nothing to say, he wanted Soda to know he loved him.


	14. Tears of a Clown

Chapter 14: Tears of a Clown

Soda hugged himself and tried to sleep. There were only a few hours before they needed to get up and keep moving.

As hard as he tried, he couldn't help thinking about Sandy. He missed her even more than ever before now that he was alone every night. Even surrounded by his comrades, some of whom had saved his life, and Two-Bit and Steve, who had been saving him from Socs for years, he was alone. He missed Ponyboy and Darry. He missed Sandy.

Some of the guys made off-color jokes about making it with some gook prostitute as soon as they made it to Ho Chi Minh City, or made it back to Khe Sanh at the end of their tour.

Two-Bit had thought it was hilarious that they called what they were doing a "tour." Like they were on vacation in Paris. He cracked that same joke every once in a while, but it sounded bitterer each time.

Soda didn't want to sleep with anyone, not even Sandy. He wanted to hold her, to run his hand through her lemonade-colored hair and bury his nose in it, the smell overwhelming him.

All he could smell now was jungle. It was a thick, marshy smell, and it hung over them like a wet blanket. It smelled like ripe gym socks, Soda thought, or some kind of mix of rotten eggs. Or maybe it was just them. They hadn't bathed properly in god knows how long.

Soda shut his eyes tightly and tried to ignore Steve's snoring. He tried to remember how Sandy smelled, her perfume and shampoo mingling with the natural, heady sweetness of her skin. He loved her natural scent more than anything, the taste of it. It was better than chocolate chip cookies.

But the scent of the swamp was lodged in his nostrils firmly, overwhelming his memory. He sighed inwardly and hunkered down further in his sleeping bag.

Unable to sleep, he looked at the stars. He found the North Star and the Big Dipper, and tried to find Orion's belt like Sandy had shown him a long time ago. One good thing that could be said for Vietnam, when it wasn't raining like crazy and when people weren't shooting at you, if you had a good view of the sky through the trees, you could see more stars than you had ever seen before in your life. They shone so brightly and were so numerous that Soda thought it would take less time to count all the patches of black sky he could see than it would to number the stars.

He thought he could see Orion's belt. It took him a while each time he looked for it, but he could always track it down eventually. He outstretched an arm to trace it with his index finger, willing it to be the side of Sandy's face instead.

"Keep your arm out too long, you'll find it covered with mosquito bites."

Soda sat up, startled. He hadn't noticed Zhang watching him.

"I got up to piss and saw you. Go to sleep, son. Your girlfriend won't help you out here."

Soda blushed. How had Zhang known?

Zhang smirked. "I'm not a mind reader, but I've been to war for too long. I know how these things are. Back to bed, soldier. She'll be waiting for you when we move out in the morning, and the morning after, and every morning after until we make it back. You haven't gotten any Dear John letters so far, so you know she's in it for the long haul."

Soda grinned to himself. Zhang didn't know as much as he thought he did. Hell, if he couldn't even figure out Soda, how did he know what was going on at all? What if there was no war at all, and they were out here for nothing?

It was all for nothing. Soda's vision began to spin before him, all the stars merging into one.

Randy's death. Being away from Pony and Darry so long. Steve's violence. Two-Bit's bitterness.

And more than just that. Dally. Johnny. What were they now? Shadows of memory, names in the paper, worms in the dirt.

That's what Soda was right now. Lying with worms in the dirt. Dally to his left, Johnny to his right. All full of worms. Soda was full of worms too. They crawled on him and in him, and in his clothes, although how they got in he wasn't sure because his clothes were so filthy they must have grown on him by now.

His chest was tight. What if he was dying? He hoped he was dying. He would be dead soon anyway, dead like Randy and Dally and Johnny…he wanted to go home. He would go home when he was dead, like Randy did, shipped in a wooden box with a flag draped over it, and already the flag was damp from the humid Vietnam climate. He didn't want his flag to be damp. So I guess I can't die here, he told himself. But it was too late, he was already dying.

Soda's smile had stretched across his face, wide and humorless. He had no idea what he looked like but he was sure it was grotesque. A monster's smile. So grotesque, in fact, that when Zhang came back and saw him still smiling, he peered at Soda curiously and asked, "You all right, son?"

Soda burst into peals of laughter. High, unstoppable laughter, like a hyena's. Tears rolled down his face and his stomach hurt, and he knew he was going to wake up the others, but he couldn't stop himself.

To his credit, Zhang didn't say anything. Soda thought he saw Zhang open his mouth once, but then think the better of it and roll over to sleep with his back to Soda.

Soda eventually stopped laughing, but couldn't stop the grin from remaining plastered across his face, unavoidable as a skull's permanent smirk. He didn't know when he dropped off, but when he did, he dreamed of worms crawling out of bloodless wounds in his hands and stomach.

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The next night, before they dropped off to sleep, Mohammed caught Soda looking at Orion's belt again.

"Constellations? Sodapop Curtis, you surprise me every day," he remarked with a tired laugh.

"Yeah," Soda said softly, pointing.

Mohammed nodded. "Sirius. The dog." He shrugged. "Pretty," he added as an afterthought.

Soda laughed and laughed and laughed.

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Sorry if this chapter was weird. I was trying to portray a little bit of insanity.


	15. Mother and Child

Chapter 15: Mother and Child

Sodapop could feel himself changing again, metamorphosing into another man. It had happened before when his parents had died, and he had become a man who loved too hard because he was acutely aware of how quickly people could be lost.

And then Sandy had left him, and he had transformed again, this time into a man afraid to love for fear of being hurt.

And once more, when Dallas and Johnny had died, he became a man who was lost in the world, afraid to touch anyone or anything because everything he loved disappeared. He was helpless against it.

And now, he was changing again. He was changing into a man who no longer threw up at the sight of his comrades, the only people in this strange country who were on his side and who understood him (literally—despite being in country for nearly nine months, he still couldn't speak one word of Vietnamese), falling dead beside him.

He no longer reacted to the sight of dead bodies, dead Americans, dead Viet Cong, dead children, rotting on the roadsides in the same ditches and trenches where they had been shot.

He couldn't react to Two-Bit and Steve falling apart, either. Steve became increasingly violent—he shot wildly and without mercy, sometimes filling a man with as many as ten bullets before he was satisfied he was dead.

Two-Bit didn't show any inner turmoil, but he no longer cracked jokes or tried to cheer up the others. Not since Mohammed, his young Muslim friend, had fallen to sniper attack during a raid.

Soda wrote to Sandy once, telling her how much he still loved her and that he really didn't care that the child wasn't his, and that all he wanted was her back. That her memory was all that was keeping him alive, and that he hoped she hadn't moved on so easily. That he hoped she didn't hate him like the young college students they talked about on the radio did.

That was one thing about the war that irked him more than everything else, somehow. Those protesters hated the soldiers for being Vietnam. As if they had asked to be here. He wished they could come and see the conditions here for themselves and have to be in country themselves. Hah, then they'd see that no one in their right mind would ask to come here.

He had written the letter over a series of three nights. It was ten pages long, the longest thing Soda had ever written. He read it over once, and then tore it up and left the scraps in the mud of their campground the next morning.

It was strange. Some of the soldiers said now that combat was the only thing reminding them they were alive—something they didn't have to take passively, they way they had to take others' deaths, or the rain, or the gangrene.

The gangrene. Some of the men had taken off their shoes after weeks to see that their flesh was rotting off. They had had to be sent to the first aid camp to be treated.

Anyway, Soda didn't agree with them. About only feeling alive in combat. Actually, combat was the place he felt the most dead.

He saw himself killing others, and watched people shoot at their own countrymen. Soda would never, ever forget the day a young South Vietnamese mother and her terrified daughters had hidden in a trench beside them, keeping their heads down and trying not to scream as bullets flew above them.

That was the day Mohammed had died. He had been trying to escort them away from the gunfire, so they could get to the main road and escape, but he had taken a shot first to the shoulder, and then to the back.

He had bled out. The young mother had tried to staunch the bleeding and tie tourniquets but it was too late. He died within ten minutes of being shot.

Soda never felt like it was him shooting or being shot at. Nor was it someone else. It was him, but it was his body dismembered from his mind, a puppet someone else was using to make him do things.

He never really understood why he felt that way. Maybe he was trying to make himself blameless. Maybe it was just a way to deal with the guilt.

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It was August of 1968. Ponyboy was entering his final year of high school, and was beginning to fill out college applications.

Darry was working overtime again. Ponyboy had gotten a job at the DX over the summer, and was continuing to work there part-time now that school had started again.

Darry didn't know about the job at first. He would have flipped if Ponyboy had told him. But then he had had to go to the doctor, who diagnosed him with ulcers from too much stress and working too much.

Ponyboy had then shown him the money he had earned. He hadn't spent a penny of it; he had been saving it to help pay for college. He presented it to Darry as soon as his older brother came home from the hospital.

"You can't keep working this hard, Darry," Ponyboy had said before Darry could argue. "You'll kill yourself first."

So Ponyboy was still working at the DX, doing the counter job Soda had done before. The manager was the same one who had hired Soda, and he always grinned and shook his head whenever he saw Ponyboy talking to a female customer.

"Just the same as your older brother," he said. "All the young ladies' cars just _happen_ to break down on the opposite side of town. Hoo boy."

Ponyboy wasn't taking too many hard classes this year, and he was sure glad of it. Between track, his job and school, he didn't have much time left.

He had been dating this pretty young girl, Cathy, but he had broken up with her. She was gorgeous, but he could tell she still wasn't over her ex-boyfriend, Bryon Douglass. He didn't have much time for dates anyway.

He still wrote Soda daily, no matter how tired he was. He hoped his brother was getting all his letters.

He wondered how post worked over there. He knew Vietnam was damp, because a lot of Soda's letters were crinkled like they had been wet.

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End file.
